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Doklands

12 years of music

Yma Sumac - Chicken Talk

Here's the high priestess of Peruvian exotica on a track from her 1954 album Mambo!. Yma Sumac was, for all her musical incorrectness, still the possessor of one of the world's great voices. She often claimed that her music was inspired by birdsong, and while the melodious call of the chicken is absent from this recording, it's not the sort of thing we could pass over either. Chicken Talk is fruity flamboyance with some particularly broke-ass mambo rhythms, and Sumac going from baritone to high soprano in a single breath.